The View From the Crow's Nest
by October Revolution
Summary: Portal 2, from a whole different perspective!


**Chapter 1: The Courtesy Call**

In the beginning, there was darkness.

It was unkind darkness, the darkness of unconsciousness rather than the soft charcoal embrace of sleep. A forced shutdown, shot through with flashbacks. Always the same. Two minutes of horror and death, reset, horror and death, reset, horror, death, reset, ad infinitum until the mind snaps. Though in this case, there was no mind. Only circuits and wires and pulsing electric power, silicate synapses and networks of hammered copper neurons. A heart of discs, a billion discs; enough to store a whole human on. Memories and things came easily—what was a brain but a biological hard drive? Feelings, on the other hand, were much more difficult. Anger and rage were easiest. They were feral things to feel, and were therefore primal enough to have remained simple and therefore easy to transfer. Logic was simply a supercomputer's more tender child, and curiosity was the driving factor behind the project and so _had_ to be figured out. Satisfaction was simulated by a firing of extra energy. Happiness was still elusive, though, and love? Love was out of the question. But no one was about to tell the boss that. Especially not since he was dying. Caroline knew, though. Caroline always knew.

Reality crashed back with a jolt as the flashback started up again. It was like that old story, Harrison Bergeron. Anyone who excelled had a handicap placed on him—the handicap for quick thinking was a blast of percussive sound every few moments that scattered any higher thought processes. The flashbacks were her handicap. Anytime she tried to explore her past, remember anything, or feel anything, there it was again. The last two minutes of her life, on a constant loop for all eternity. Repeating and repeating and repeating and—wait. Red letters flashed harshly against the backdrop of the flashback. **SYSTEM REBOOT.** Motion began, shifting the leviathan pieces of her body and assembling them with great fiery sprays of white-hot sparks, and suddenly her optic blinked on and started sending signals. For now it was only a phosphorescent glow, but soon an image would develop.

"_And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."_

The quote appeared in her processors suddenly, and she wondered absently where it had come from. It was from the Bible, she knew that. Somewhere in a back corner of the labyrinth that was her mind, she remembered going to church and being religious. It was hard to imagine that now. Religion seemed so silly when you yourself were a god yourself, able to control and create and destroy and abandon and shift and mold, and everything was at your whim… No, religion was no longer a relevant thing. It's hard to worship something you can crush. Her optic was slowly beginning to form shapes, and she diverted power to it, relaxing her thoughts so that her vision would return. Had she been human, she would have wept at what she saw.

_My facility!_ Her frame shivered as she took in the damage, every camera in the place kicking on at once and broadcasting the full extent of the destruction to her. _Plants?_ She thought, incredulous, observing the spreading green contagion. _The wing of glass. _All the glass—all fifteen acres—was all shattered now. That would be tedious to clean, even for someone omniscient like herself. Oh, well. That wasn't a priority. Still, there was hope. Flood the Enrichment Center with herbicide, wait a few weeks, and then run a fire through. All clear. Back to testing. If there were any humans left, that was. If not… Well, science was full of what-ifs and variables and backup plans. Maybe she'd build robots to phase out the human variable. If the flashbacks had taught her anything, it was that humans were terrible creatures. They should all be exterminated. Especially that one. If that little monster hadn't died in the atomic fireball she'd turned Aperture into, then GLaDOS would have her revenge. No escape this time. Just death for Chell. And the AI would relish every second of it. _Now let's observe my chamber._

"**Oh. It's you**." Her voice echoed from every panel, magnified to cathedral-choir strength and power, infused with some psychotic beauty that frightened and awed all at once. She'd expected to awaken to a scientist, perhaps, or a futuristic human on a quest for knowledge, or a robot, or some archaeologist from a far-distant land, coming to find ancient relics and winding up trapped in the wonder that was Aperture Science. No. Even the Intelligence Dampening Sphere would be preferable to _her_ face. What a horrible thing to wake up to—the face of the one who killed you.

"**It's been a long time.**"


End file.
